


Hollirey Week Day 2: Escape

by AU_rubix_cube



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannot tell you how tempted I was to call it "if you like pina coladas", Hollirey Week, M/M, Metallokinetic Robert Svane, Pre-Earp Curse (Wynonna Earp), Prompt: Escape, Sort Of, Trapped In A Closet, bamf Robert Svane, disaster Doc Holliday, uuuuh so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AU_rubix_cube/pseuds/AU_rubix_cube
Summary: Doc finds himself caught up in the stone witch's plan to save her demon husband. Whoever will come to save John Henry?
Relationships: Doc Holliday/Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the Hollirey Week blog on tumblr: curseboundxxandxxwhiskeytongued

Doc had only one thing to say for himself, and it was the same thing he usually had to say for himself in situations such as this:

_ It seemed like a good idea at the time. _

It had seemed like the  _ only _ idea at the time. But now he was fairly sure it was going to get him killed, and he didn’t want to die. That was why he had made a deal with the witch in the first place. His health and constitution restored, the disease scrubbed from his blood... all in exchange for his word that when she asked him to come with her and do all she asked, he would do so willingly. 

For one night. 

One night only, she had promised with a smile, and after that, he would be free of any and all obligations to her.

He hadn’t been delirious enough to think that a woman like Constance Clootie would just want his body. He’d imagined she’d want him to kill or steal or torture in her name, and that was nothing he hadn’t done before for less. With his vision gradually dimming and his lungs feeling like they were full of sand, he’d been more than glad to take her offer.

If he could go back to that moment, he knew he’d do it again.

But at the present moment he was chained to a chair in the damp cellar below Purgatory’s dingy little church feeling rather foolish.

Admittedly, the witch had caught him off guard. After she had healed him she had simply walked off without another word and left him lying alone on his disgusting sickbed, crying with joy like a child because he could breathe without it hurting. He had assumed she would demand her payment immediately. 

Instead, nothing. Not a meeting, nor a letter, nor a message for more than four months. 

Doc had decided to look for Wyatt, because apparently the gift of a new chance at life wasn’t enough to kill old habits. He had arrived in the town of Purgatory at dusk, rented a room for the night at the first inn he came across, and walked up to it to find the witch sitting on the narrow bed waiting for him. She was wearing a bright red and white dress with a lot of ruffles, white satin gloves and dainty little white calfskin boots. A disturbing splash of too-crisp colours in this grey little town. She smiled at him. 

Doc closed the door, and smiled back.

He had dropped the smile when she told him to take off his guns, but he had done as she asked, as per their agreement. They left them under the bed and walked downstairs together. Her pale fingers were as cold and strong as steel bands when she took his arm, cozying up to him as if they were friends.

She let go of him once they were out of town, and he followed her in silence up the long dirt road to the church. It was a new moon. There was no light in the church. When Constance walked ahead of him towards the dim shape of the altar, the white in her dress almost seemed to glow.

“Take off your coat and hat.” She said.

Henry raised an eyebrow to himself, but did as he was told, and placed his belongings on a pew by the door. Constance had lit a single black candle on the altar.

“Come.”

Ignoring his unease, he walked to the altar. There was a large black book lying beside the candle.

“Place your hand on the book,” Constance ordered in her soft voice, “And read out the words I have written here.”

(This was the part where Doc started to suspect that he was going to seriously regret this.)

She held up a piece of paper in the candlelight.

“Er… could you hold it a little further back?” Doc asked. His voice was uncomfortably loud in the darkness. He lowered it somewhat. “I can’t quite read- there, yes.” 

Constance was looking annoyed, so he leaned back a little and squinted at the paper and haltingly read out:

“I, John Henry Holliday, come to you w... willingly on this unholy night. My mind is willing. My body is willing. My heart is willing. My soul is… uh… tainted. My sins are unrepented. I renounce the light, renounce salvation. Come to me. I choose... damnation.”

Doc felt there ought to have been a thunderclap or something after that. At the very least, the candle should have been blown out by a sudden gust of icy-cold wind. Maybe it did, if one learned the lines in advance and recited them properly, but it was hardly his fault he hadn’t done that. In what he had considered something of an anticlimax, Constance blew the candle out. 

Like an idiot, he thought it was all over, and that was when she led him down into the cellar and chained him to this uncomfortable wooden chair and left him.

After about five minutes alone in the dark he decided that _ I choose damnation _ was on of the most stupid things he could have possibly said to a demon’s wife. It would probably be for the best if he left before he could find something stupider. Since Constance had not actually told him to _ stay here _ , just to “sit down” before she chained him up, he would not _ technically _ be breaking their contract by getting out of said chains, and going to sit down somewhere else until sunup. At which point he would be free. Yes? Yes. 

Next order of business; getting out of these chains.

Unfortunately, that proved to be rather more difficult than anticipated. He could hardly move. Relaxing and breathing out gave him nowhere near enough slack on the metal links to work with. The wooden chair was a damn sight sturdier than it looked, and after numerous attempts to break the back of it or smash the legs all he accomplished was that he was short of breath, which wasn’t helping him to stay calm in this fucking dark  _ cramped _ cellar with the stone witch planning to do God-wouldn’t-want-to-know-what to him. Had he mentioned that it was very dark, and the chains were making him feel trapped, he was trapped, he was-  _ jesus fuck something was scrabbling at the coal grid Doc was going to  _ **_DIE_ ** _ - _

The grid was up on the wall near the door to Doc’s left, and he could only watch in horror as it was wrenched open bit by bit. A scream was building up in his throat, but his chest felt so tight that it only came out as a sort of squeak-

“Be quiet!” The something whispered urgently. 

Doc was so surprised that he did so.

And then a pair of boots appeared through the coal grid, followed by a pair of legs in suit trousers as a man shuffled into the cellar backwards on his belly. With his head and shoulders still outside, he kicked around until he found the coal box. Standing on that, he wiggled his torso through the opening. Then he let go of the coal grind and hopped down off the box. There was something oddly familiar about the vague shape of him, the way he moved-

The man lit a candle he had pulled out of his pocket and held it up for them to see each other by.

They stared at each other for a moment. Then they both hissed:

_ “You?!” _


	2. Chains

_Robert Svane._ Because this night could just not get any worse, that prissy little mouse was somehow mixed up in all of this. 

“What are you doing here?” Doc snarled under his breath.

“What are _you_ doing here?! You’re supposed to be dead! Or- dying.” Robert whispered back, stepping closer and raising the candle to peer at Doc in unreasonably horrified disbelief. There was a smudge of coal on his cheek.

“Oh, well, I am _so_ sorry to disappoint. I am afraid that if you were told I was to die, then your dear mistress has not been entirely truthful with you when it comes to her deals and doings with other men.”

“My mistress?! What mistress?”

“...You are not working for the witch?”

“Wha- _no!_ Why would you think- why would I climb through the _coal chute_ if I-” He cut himself off with a short, irritated exhale, causing the candle to gutter. “No, I am _not_ working for Constance Clootie.” 

“Then why are you here?”

“Apparently, I am rescuing _you_.” Robert muttered, in a tone that strongly implied he had wanted to tack “you moron” onto the end of the sentence before his mousy manners had kicked in. Doc had no manners to spare at present, so he just snorted:

“Oh, you are? And how do you propose to get me out of these chains?”

Robert scowled at him. It made his nose scrunch up and his blue eyes narrow behind the reflection of the candle-flame in his glasses. He glanced around the room, walked around the chair and tugged half-heartedly at a loop of chain. Standing in front of Doc again, he chewed his lip for a moment. Doc raised an insolent eyebrow. (He was steadfastly ignoring the voice at the back of his mind suggesting that it might not be the best idea to antagonise his rescuer, no matter their proficiency or otherwise in the area of chain-breaking.)

Robert appeared to reach a decision. He nodded to himself in a determined sort of way and took a deep breath.

“Close your eyes.” 

“What? No. Why?” Doc asked suspiciously.

“Would you just trust me? Close them!”

“So far, you have not done a single thing that inspires me to trust you, and saying things like that does not help!”

Robert tilted his head and smiled with false sweetness.

“Fine.” He said, and blew the candle out.

Doc bit back a yelp. The smell of the smoke was sharp in his nose, distracting him as Robert moved to stand behind him. He felt the chains shifting on his skin. He heard Robert breathe out slowly.

Suddenly his skin prickled all over, hairs standing up on his arms. The air was full of- _energy_ , that breathless feeling of urgency you got when you stood outside just seconds before it began to rain-

The was a metallic grating sound like a key turning in a rusty lock. Doc breathed out, and heard Robert so the same.

“Alright.” He heard him whisper to himself. 

The chains around Doc’s shoulders fell slack. He tried to shrug them off and wriggle away, but they caught around his waist and wrists-

“Stop that!” Robert snapped. “You’ll tangle them again.”

“Well perhaps if you would be so good as to _let there be light_ , I could see what I was doing.”

“I am _trying_ to light the candle, just _wait_.”

Doc sighed and resisted the urge to tap his feet. Robert tried to light a match and failed, but with the next one he got the candle burning again.

“Just hold still, please.” He asked as he set it down on the floor in front of the chair. He leaned forward over Doc to unwind a loop of chain from around his neck. For some reason, he smelled faintly of shoe polish. Doc sniffed curiously. If Robert didn’t like that it was his problem, he was the one getting his open collar in Doc’s face. 

Hmm… shoe polish and pine needles and coal. Well, under the circumstances, he supposed a man couldn’t be expected to be perfectly groomed.

Robert dropped to his knees to fiddle with the chains keeping Doc’s wrists lashed to the arms of the chair. His fingertips brushed the back of Doc’s hands, grazed his wrists. Doc stared down at him in the dim light, trying not to feel too impatient now that he could finally _move_. 

When his left hand was freed he immediately scrabbled at the right one. Robert slapped his wrist.

“Stop!” He hissed.

Doc gaped at him, affronted. He had half a mind to give Robert a little slap back, right across his face, just to assert a little control over this confounded situation. But it was too risky a move while the little mouse was actually proving himself useful.

“See if you can get your leg free.” Robert said.

They worked together in silence for a long moment. Once Robert got his other hand free, he seized the pile of chains still in Doc’s lap and hauled them off him. 

“Haha!” Doc exclaimed gleefully. He jumped to his feet and almost fell headlong. Luckily the chains around his right foot slipped off and he was able to catch himself, but Robert was knocked back on his ass with a little squeak. 

“Sorry.” Doc said, shaking his left foot until the chains fell off it. 

“Shh!” Robert whispered, looking comically affronted. “Stop it, don’t jangle them like that!”

Since Doc had already finished extracting his foot, he nodded sagely and innocently put a finger to his lips. While Robert extracted himself from his armful of chains, Doc examined the lock that had held them in place.

It was _massive_ , almost as big as Doc’s head, with a design of a snake coiling around a pentagram etched into the surface. It looked as if there were no less than seventeen tumblers arranged around the outside, and an unusually large keyhole in the middle. 

“Gawd _almighty._ How did you pick that?” He asked, impressed despite himself. 

Robert picked himself and his candle up off the floor and ignored him.

“The lock is fake?” Doc guessed. “Or all the dials are fake but one?”

“Is this really the time?” Robert asked, exasperated, trying to brush off his plaid suit. (Did he not own any other garments?) 

But he looked strangely guilty.

However, he had a point about the propriety of the time and place. 

“Well now, by all means- if you are quite finished freshening up, let us get the hell out of here.” Doc said.

“Hey- where do you think you’re going?!” Robert hissed, darting after him as he set off and trying to grab his arm. Doc brushed him off and continued up the steps to the door. “Oh, that’s right, ignore me, you’re just going to waltz out though the front door because you’re _Doc Holli_ -”

“Hush now, Robert.” Doc whispered mildly, crouching down to peer through the keyhole. 

All he could make out was that it was dark in the nave, so he put his ear to the keyhole and listened.

Absolute silence. 

If anyone were there, they would have heard the two of them already, Doc told himself, and opened the door.


End file.
